The Tailoring Industry, 1850–1914

Abstract

A detailed study of the tailoring industry is particularly appropriate in relation to homework since the industry employed many women in their homes in most of the tailoring centres in the country. Tailoring had a rigid sexual division of labour based on differentials of strength and skill and the position of women in the badly-paid sectors of the industry remained unchanged with the introduction of machinery to the industry. Women could buy or rent sewing machines and use them in their homes. The expansion in demand for ready-made clothing in the early twentieth century was not met by improvements in technology but by employing more women as home workers. The numbers of women homeworkers as a proportion of the total work-force in tailoring varied according to where the industry was situated. In this chapter, the effects of the introduction of the sewing machine in tailoring will be discussed. This is followed by a comparison of three geographical areas where tailoring was carried out in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.